


Reaching Okeanos

by bhgeorge19



Category: Fate/Zero
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 14:02:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bhgeorge19/pseuds/bhgeorge19
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The days after the end of the war, and how Waver takes on the world. Spoilers for Fate/Zero.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reaching Okeanos

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skaikru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skaikru/gifts).



> Apologies if this fic takes apart some of the principles of the Fate/Zero universe. I did my best to do a "fix fic" without it being cheap. I hope it's convincing enough! Have a Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays.

REACHING OKEANOS

In the game's format, each saved game was called a "Campaign." Every time Waver would turn it on, he was brutally reminded that there was one campaign that would never be finished, directly above his on top of his file.

"OKEANOS" it read, in unnecessary uppercase. 

They'd argued over it. He'd spied Iskander setting up the game and pointed out, with effort put into sounding disinterested, that the game did allow for lowercase words.

"Ahh, but a big campaign deserves a BIG name!" the king had replied, flashing him a big, toothy grin.

It had been nearly a month since the end of the Fourth Holy War, and each time he started the game the word was there.

The meaning had changed, though, much to his surprise. It was a painful reminder, for the first few days, of what he had gained and lost on such short notice: a friend, a king, a purpose. Then, the word began to vex him. He resented the way it made him feel, and under his breath he uttered tiny, guilty curses, figurative claw-less scratches, like the tiny insults he'd thrown at Iskander when he'd been alive. He felt terribly bad immediately after he'd said so, and even more when the grief began to give in. 

The sweet side of that bittersweet memory was beginning to take over. He cried less and less, and life moved on. And he felt terrible for it. He was sure he should have suffered more, that he should've been crying just as much two weeks in as he'd done the first couple of nights.

But then the word had become a challenge. 

It had happened one afternoon, one perfectly insignificant one. He remembered all the insignificant details too: the way the dying sun was pouring into his room, the tired feeling of his legs after getting home from his part-time job ("boy, Waver, you're like a wizard at boxing things!" people kept saying at the little grocery store where he worked), and the slight stickiness of sweat on his shirt. After a day like that, he just wanted to play. He'd gotten addicted to it. The game was predictable, silly, and frivolous, and damn if he didn't love it. 

When he turned the game on, OKEANOS appeared before him... and he decided to reach for it. "What if I beat you?" he said into thin air, closing his eyes and tossing his head lightly in a haughty way, "Wouldn't that be something? You would probably have to come down here and set the record straight! But I think I'll make sure to set an unbeatable record for you. How about that?"

Then he'd smiled. Sadly at first, but the smile turned into a smirk. It was strange how, in making believe that he was a man and a conqueror, he was being so much of a boy. He'd bragged about his game during dinner with the Mackenzies, making efforts to explain to his adopted grandparents what each achievement was. Martha had said something off-handed about how she 'didn't quite get videogames', but had been kind enough to smile and applaud his little big victories.

Little big victories.

He played well into the night, thinking about a lot of things while he'd conquered territory after territory. He thought about what he was doing, and whether or not it was a distraction. He thought about the little big victories. How the approving voice of two old people felt a hundred-fold better than any kind of approval he gotten before. He thought about the score. The thrill. 'Do it to the fullest, whether in war, eating or sex...' he'd said to him once. And true, this was living, really living--!

It was 1:43 AM when he'd stopped.

When he realized that he was only so close to conquering Arabia-- ahh, and what a politically incorrect goal that was, too. But thing is, if he did that, he would overcome the score left by Iskander.

Chill rushed up his hands, all the way to the very tip of his fingers. As if he had ice water in his veins. The whole of his day flashed before his eyes and, swiftly enough, after making sure his game saved, he turned off the console and backed away.

He had to work tomorrow. He also had to help the MacKenzies clean up the house. He had to do a lot of things and gaming could wait! He rode on a dozen little excuses like that to bed, and made a point not to think about anything at all until he'd finally passed out.

\---

The wind burned. Like a hundred little needles on his face. It made Waver realize that he was no longer in his room. Funny how his brain didn't register everything. It took him a moment to see the desert before him, and take in the view.

That, and the burning feeling of hot sand under his bare feet, which had him jump backwards in an effort to disperse the heat. He found there was no more heat under his feet, because he'd lost his grounding, and was now rolling down a soft, sandy dune, squawking and yelping until he finally made a landing.

"A--aghh! What... what's all this, where am I?" he blurted out as he pulled himself up to his knees.

A landscape with no limits. A scenery with no recognizable landmarks. And yet, the moment his green eyes got a good look at it, he felt his heart clench. His mouth went dry. He knew this place-- he knew it because it existed inside him, in a little corner of his heart, like a memory that could not go away.

"Ionian Hetar--"

A thunderous, deafening sound followed. Waver was sure he'd screamed, but he couldn't hear it over the roar of the land and the sky, which shook as the ground beneath his palms and knees parted for stone and marble to rise. And rise and rise-- a whole structure was surfacing from the sand, walls and ceiling and everything, being quite inconsiderate about the fact that architecture shouldn't just pop out under people.

This was a new feeling: seismophobia and building acrophobia all at the same time. But Waver Velvet was a learned young man, so he knew just what to do. 

He screamed louder.

He kept screaming until the whole thing stopped, and the earth was no longer roaring to hide his high pitched squeal, while hiding his head underneath his hands.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh! Ahhh--" a pause. Was it over? "Ahhhh..." Well he felt like screaming a little more just to be on the safe side. The whole thing felt like it deserved a lot more screaming.

Finally, there was silence and stillness... so he decided to look up.

The silence broke with boisterous laughter, from a few hundred men all at once. There, in front of him, on a courtyard of a palace, was an army of friendly faces from thorough history-- and at the time, they were laughing at him, good naturedly.

His cheeks burned with blush. 

"Enough, enough!" came a voice from the crowd. A powerful, deep voice, of a man who seemed to have gravel in his chest. "What kind of way is that to welcome my vassal?"

Waver stopped breathing for a moment.

"Well?!" the voice came again, as a man, larger and more imposing than the rest stepped through the crowd. Red-haired Iskander, in his finest cape and with his frame as big as Waver remembered it, appeared between his brave warriors. "It isn't, is it? So, how do we do this right?!" he asked his men, before hoisting up his sword. "We do it with laughter and wine!"

The laughter resumed, along with cheer and merriment-- and the rush of several of the men rushing to procure the wine, as Iskander crossed the space still between him and Waver. They were in a courtyard-- a palace, with great columns that stretched to the skies, left and right, by walls with gigantic bulls made of stone and murals made of colored brick. "How do you like it?" the king asked, "I got it while I was in Persia!"

Waver had barely managed to get himself up on his knees, his face a mixture of confusion and tentative hope.

"Not impressed?" Iskander asked, baffled and worried. "I really thought it would do the trick. Hrmm."

"I--Ii..."

"Iiii....mpressed?"

For the longest time, Waver didn't dare utter a word. He felt the fear of someone who sets out to catch a soap bubble in mid air, and knows that at the tiniest movement, it will pop. Oh, but what cruelty... that in a sun-baked hall full of jubilant laughter, he had to sit there, in the middle, made into a living monument to silence and misery.

But the fear of ruining this was just a great as the fear of his suspicions coming true. And the latter won over, because, if this was what he thought he was, he just wouldn't be able to accept it. He wouldn't be able to bear it if it ended. 

"Am I dr--dreaming?" Waver managed, voice catching in his throat.

Iskander stood there, hands on his hips, with a warm smile on his cheeks. 

"R-right now is not the time to make me interpret the silence," the boy whimpered.

"Hrmm..."

"Tell me. Am I dreaming?"

"Waver--"

"Are you going to answer me, you old fool?!" he finally shouted, jumping to his feet. "Tell me!"

A few seconds of painful silence. Painful for Waver, in any case, Iskander chuckled softly. "Ahh, I wanted you to ask like that. There... better out than in, right? And the answer is... no, this isn't a dream, Waver."

He shook. Speechless again, Waver just stood there, shaken by the answer.

"Well," Iskander continued, taking a hand behind his head. "Yes and no... in a way. Hrm. It's one of those special dreams. I'd have to explain... There's exceptions to the boundaries of the Throne of Heroes, and I honestly wish I could put it--"

"You died," Waver said. To his surprise, he sounded mildly accusing.

Iskander's arms dropped. Put-upon, and with a sad serenity, he nodded. "Ahh. I did."

"You died again."

"Yeah... I did. That was embarrassing. Sorry about that, I really wasn't expecting the king of Babylon to have another trick up his sleeve..."

"I thought I told you to win the Grail and take the world for yourself. When did I ever tell you to die?!" Waver began.

Iskander said nothing.

"I didn't tell you to die!"

Still nothing.

"I didn't want you to die!"

The silence was thick. By this point, none of the members of the heroic battalion said anything, not that they could: for only the bravest of men can speak in such circumstances. They have to be brave for it because anyone else would fall prey to the fear of saying something wrong - and there are moments, such as the one playing on there, when there's nothing right to say.

So it was that Iskander let out a small, and tired-sounding: "Sorry."

It was entirely improper. He had nothing to apologize for, and it was only the most irrational parts of Waver that wanted to hear it. As soon as the word was spoken, those parts of him quieted down: and when the voice died out, other feelings surfaced. Ineffectually choking back sobs, he threw himself against the chest-- well, stomach of his king, wiping his tears and runny nose against it. "Idiot, idiot, idiot!"

Iskander smiled warmly-- and then, after two minutes of weeping had passed, after Waver had spent enough time hugging him to reassure himself that the king was there, and had calmed down, the smile turned a bit awkward. Iskander had always been an affectionate man, but none of his brave Macedonian warriors had ever picked up his cape and blown his nose on it. "Hrmm..."

"Idiot... I missed you!"

"I know."

"I really did! And you died without cleaning up the room. I had to work on that for days!"

Iskander couldn't help but laugh. "Ahh-ahh! Well, we really should have gotten ourselves some servants, right?"

"I had to sneak out so many bottles of wine. You don't know how many questions I dodged from the neighbors! This one lady was wondering if Mr. MacKenzie had finally become an alcoholic."

"Hrmm. Like I said, I know."

"Yeah y--" Waver's raw whimper stopped, and he looked up with bloodshot, confused eyes. "You," pause for snorting in a bit of unruly, embarrassing snot, which made him blush and immediately try to force a more dignified look, with as much ferocity as a puppy trying to look menacing. "You do?"

"Hrmm. Of course. When you think of the dead, the dead can hear you."

"Oh..." Waver said. "I wasn't sure you could do that, not from the Throne of Heroes. Wouldn't there be too many voices? There's probably thousands of people thinking about you, all at the same time."

The king laughed then. "Yes! Thousands, reading about me, in schools and libraries, thinking about my exploits and conquests. That's what being a hero is about!" he exclaimed, only to lose his steam briefly. "Ahh-- if only I could hear that... but the Throne of Heroes is nearly inaccessible. You can feel it, vaguely, the impression you made on the world... like an echo, but that's about it. "

"Then... how? I thought even the souls of the dead that were close to you cannot reach you there. So the legend remains 'pure' and all."

"Hrmm. Yes, a man who chooses the path of legend does forsake the company of loved ones, even in life. That is how you prepare for an eternity apart of them. You must be ready to give up the world itself, if the world itself is your ambition. But it's not a rule written in stone... ahh, or without its loopholes. For example, your loved ones may join you in your wild ride," he said, with a significant pause. "Or you may make a legend out of them."

Waver still looked confused.

"Here," said Iskander, spreading his arms and gesturing to the courtyard. "We are not in the Throne of Heroes. We are in the one other place where I always exist... a place that is only known for those who rode with me into battle."

A pause. Waver realized then: "The bubble--"

"The plains of conquest! The fields where we all rode. A shared dream that even I alone couldn't make, but rather, it is made from the bond between me," Iskander said, taking a heavy hand to Waver's head, letting it land there (drawing a tiny yelp from him), "and my vassals. That is how I can listen to you."

The boy was breathless.

Iskander took a hand to his chin, rubbing it. "It was a stroke of luck that you swore yourself properly, too. Not a whole lot of people these days know how to swear fealty!"

Waver's cheeks burned red. "W--whaa-- I, I-- but, I made it up on the spot!"

"Yes, but you were talking from the heart. That is how true loyalty is sworn."

"It was really clumsy poetry," Waver said, with embarrassment making his voice small and surly.

"And what is loyalty but the most reckless act of poetry, hmm?!" Iskander exclaimed. "That's enough of putting yourself down, Waver Velvet. For that matter, I have been watching over you... and I hoped we would meet again with your first conquest. So I was very concerned that you gave up so close..."

Waver was startled.

"Is your king someone who would give up so close to a goal?"

"Is this--"

"This is about the videogame."

Waver took a shot at stomping on the foot of a twice-dead heroic spirit. It merely resulted in Iskander stepping aside at the last second, and Waver stumbling forward, face first, into an embarrassing landing on the ground. All while Iskander went on.

"Maybe I should have been more specific. I should've told you to live bravely..." said Iskander, rubbing his chin and walking around the boy. "So you forced my hand. We were going to throw a big banquet when you beat the game..."

Waver rolled onto his back, slapping the hard ground in protest. "How can you ask me to do that?! I can't beat your record!"

"Sure you can," said Iskander, matter of factly.

"No I can't. You're supposed to be at the top..." Waver continued.

"Ohh. That's no way of living. You can't just stop yourself over a little thing like that. I am the envy and the goal for all my vassals. You're expected to live life in my manner. All the men in my service are expected to try to outdo me. That is what makes them the most powerful, amazing army that has ever lived," Iskander said with a proud grin, which vanished as he put on a look of innocence and nonchalance. "Besides, if I was around, I'd beat your score the next day."

Waver stared. "Strange encouragement."

"It is often the best kind," Iskander said. "But look at me, Waver Velvet," he commanded, and Waver did indeed meet eyes with him, "you are my sole, living vassal. You must live in the way of a king. There will be no greater testament of the timeless greatness of Iskander in this century than you. Your every day victories, your conquests that make those two old people smile. You've done good already... You grieved me to the limit of your body, as you should, and you began to live. And it was good. You know it, in here," he reached to tap Waver's forehead, which nearly made the boy fall back, "you know you felt alive... So, why do you cower, when you are so close to Okeanos?"

After a tiny pause, and feeling tears dangerously close to spilling again, Waver replied. "But... Okeanos isn't there..."

"And yet, you're so close to crossing it. Isn't that amazing?" Iskander grinned.

Taking a hand to his eyes, to ease the sudden pressure of the tears, Waver murmured, mid-sobs. "Your talk always sounds like madness."

"I know."

"I miss it."

"Then don't," the king said. "Make up for it with our own words of madness... that is how you live up to me. You were up to a good start, already... Don't stop now."

Waver gave a little nod, and with it, his sobs became a laugh. "Is this it? Alexander the Great calls me from the afterlife to encourage me to win a videogame?" he smiled, "No other orders from my king?"

"Hrrmm... let me think," said Iskander, pretending to put much thought into it, before shaking his head. "No... that will do."

"Then, what now? I wake up, and try to believe that this wasn't just a dream?"

"Unless you'd like to stay a bit longer, but you will wake up very tired tomorrow," Iskander said. "Besides, we will meet again, once you beat the game. I will call upon you, and we will have a great banquet in your honor, boy," he said.

"C-can't I stay?"

While the words made Iskander's dark eyes flicker with sympathy, he shook his head. "No. My command is final... and my orders remain. Live. Live out the good things and remember they pass, and that's why you must enjoy them to the fullest. Here, our stories are over... and if you obsess over the dead, you will become one of them in life, wasting your precious days away. I, too, languished in life when I lost something I deeply wanted back. It brought ruin to me. Even the King of Babylon fell to his own ruin because he could not accept death."

Waver swallowed hard, tensing for a moment at the mention of the man who had overcome his king. But only then did he realize... that was not true. Gilgamesh had failed in what Iskander. "Then we meet like this..."

"I'll call you here, and you may call me, and we will gather in dreams in this place... And when it all ends, if you lived in greatness, then we will welcome you among us."

After a long silence, Waver accepted this. Wiping the last tears from his face, he smiled. "Then, I will."

"Hmm. Good."

Waver looked down. "Did you need to summon me in my pajamas, though?"

"I wanted you to be comfortable. But if you wish, next time I'll summon you naked."

"Idiot."

\---

Morning came and Waver woke up to the smell of coffee and toast coming from the kitchen, instead of the smell of wine and burning torch oil, and the sweet, brittle voice of Martha calling him from the door of his room, instead of the boisterous laughter of an army of soldiers, or the voice of his king. His eyes didn't hurt with the morning sun, because he remembered spending a long time gazing into a bright, cloudless sky.

A little part of him insisted he was a dream, and that thinking he'd seen his king was just madness.

"Good", said a loud voice in Waver's mind, "a bit madness is a good start for the day."

He got on his feet, briefly wondering if the sand he felt on his soles was there or merely his imagination, but he didn't bother to look. He called out to Martha, telling her he'd be right down after brushing his teeth, and made ready for his day. It was going to be a long one. 

He had to prepare to reach Okeanos, after all.


End file.
